لخّصلي

Post-Structuralism
Deconstruction
(The Beginning was in France)
Beginning:
Poststructuralism designates a broad variety of critical perspectives and
procedures that in the 1970s displaced structuralism from its prominence as the
radically innovative way of dealing with language and other signifying systems.
Influenced by:
● Jacques Derrida
● Ronald Barthes
● Michel Foucault
Definition:
● Deconstruction, as applied in the study of literature, designates a theory
and practice of reading which questions and claims to “subvert” or
“undermine” the assumption that the system of language provides
grounds that are adequate to establish the boundaries, the coherence or
unity, and the determinate meanings of a literary text.
Notable theorists and their works:
● Jacques Derrida: Of Grammatology (1967), Writing and Difference
(1967), and Aporias (1993)
● Ronald Barthes “The Death of the Author” (1968) and S/Z (1970)
● Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
Characteristics:
● According to Derrida, writing is more significant than reading because we
reach the core of meaning through writing.
Key Concepts:
Derrida’s concepts:
● Logocentrism
● The text as the prison house of meaning, there is nothing outside the text
● Différance and deferment
● Signified and signifier
● Binary opposition
Roland Barthes’ concepts:
● Death of the author: As soon as the author starts writing he is dead
because when he writes he has no control over the text, rather, it depends
on the interpretation of readers. Text is fabric of quotations from
thousands of cultural sources. Author uses language to put text in infinite
meanings and allows the reader to interpret it.
● Readerly Text (lisible): a text that turns the reader into a consumer. It is a
“closed” text with a limited meaning, such as a realistic novel.
● Writerly Text (scriptible): a text that encourages the reader to produce the
meaning.
Michel Foucault’s concept:
● Panopticism: the modern function of disciplinary punishment.
Feminism
Feminist theory is part of the broader feminist political movement that
seeks to rectify sexist discrimination and inequalities. It refers to the
fact that women have a literature of their own, possessing its own
images, themes, characters, forms; styles, and canons.
The oppression of women is a historical fact and literary texts mirror
gender and social attitudes about gender.
● A feminist: a person who advocates equal rights for women
● Misogyny: see the book
● Misandry: see the book
● Patriarchy: see the book
● Androcentrism: see the book
● Ecriture feminine: women writing. It promotes women’s
experience and feelings to the point that it strengthens the work.
Furthermore, “it places experience before language, and privileges
the anti-linear, cyclical writing so often frowned upon by
patriarchal society.”Cixous
The four waves: see only the focus mentioned in the book
Julia Kristeva
Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1980)
Abjection: the rejection of male-mainstream
Elaine Showalter
She developed the concept of gynocritcism, which focuses on women
as writers.
Showalter divides her female model in to two types:

1. Feminist critique exposing woman as a reader


2. Gynocritics presenting women as a writer
   A Literature of their Own: British Women Novelists from Brontë to
   Lessing (1977). This book is divided into four models
   ● The biological model: see the book
   ● The linguistic model: see the book
   ● The psychoanalytic model: see the book
   ● The cultural model: see the book
   Luce Irigaray
   Thinking the Difference (1994)
   ● Mimicry – women imitate men in order to be equal
   ● Masquerade – women as desires / or object of desires for sexual
   enjoyment, but women don’t enjoy.
   Post-colonialism
   Postcolonial studies is an interdisciplinary field that examines the global
   impact of European colonialism, from its beginnings in the fifteenth
   century up to the present. Broadly speaking, it aims to describe the
   mechanisms of colonial power, to recover excluded or marginalized
   “subaltern” voices, and to theorize the complexities of colonial and
   postcolonial identity, national belonging, and globalization.
   Key theorists and Concepts
   Edward W. Said: Culture and Imperialism (1993) and Orientalism (1978)
   Said begins Orientalism (1978) by explaining how Orientalism is defined
   within three different contexts. Academically, the term refers to the act
   of studying or otherwise engaging with the Orient. In a more informal context, Orientalism is a way of thinking about the Orient when
   contrasted with the Occident—the West. Finally, Said describes how
   historically, Orientalism is a specifically "Western style for dominating,
   restructuring, and having authority over the Orient."
   Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Masks (1952), The Wretched of the
   Earth (1961)
   ● The concept of deracinate means “to uproot or obliterate” i.e.,
   resistance.
   ● The concept of negritude is the ethnical distinctiveness of the
   African personality.
   ● The decolonization process includes different postcolonial terms,
   such as the restoration of nationhood, national liberation and the
   national resistance movements.
   Homi Bhabha: Nation and Narration (1990) and The Location of Culture
   (1994).
   ● Hybridity: the combination of two or more identities within one
   person.
   ● Mimicry: Mimicry refers to adopting and adapting or even
   copying. It is exaggeration copying of language, culture, manners,
   and ideas.
   ● Ambivalence: the colonized people perceive the oppressors as
   rude, negative and exploitive, but it is advanced. The oppressors
   perceive she colonized people as backwarded, weak and fragile
   but they are the native of the colonized lands. It refers to the
   unstable environment that the colonized is forced to either adapt
   to or work really hard to reject the colonizers’ power.
   Psychoanalysis
   It refers to the human psyche consists of unconscious and conscious
   spheres, with most of its contents lodged out of sight in the unconscious
   and covered over by a relatively smaller and less dense consciousness.
   Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams (1899)
   ● ID: sexual desires, pleasure principle
   ● Ego: reality principle
   ● Super ego: morality principle, the conscience
   Freudian slips (parapraxis):


3. Slip of the tongue


4. Slip of the pen


5. Slip of the ear
   ● Trauma: a wound inflicted not upon the body but upon the mind
   ● Bulimia: overconsumption of food
   ● Agoraphobia: a fear of being in open or public places
   ● Anorexia: mental illness caused by stopping eating
   ● Claustrophobia: fear of closed spaces
   Thanatos: it refers to death wish
   Eros: refers to survival, pleasure, and reproduction
   Defense mechanisms
   ● Repression: see the book
   ● Projection: see the book
   ● Displacement: see the book
   Jacques Lacan: The Seminar, Book I. Freud’s Papers on Technique
   (1988)
   The conscious mind is structured like a language
   ● The real order: see the book
   ● The imaginary order: see the book
   ● The symbolic order: see the book
   Shoshana Felman
   The Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century
   (2002)
   Re-traumatization: it is the drama of unintentional re-traumatization,triggered by a legal repetition of the trauma that it puts on trial.
   Feminism
   Feminist theory is part of the broader feminist political movement that
   seeks to rectify sexist discrimination and inequalities. It refers to the
   fact that women have a literature of their own, possessing its own
   images, themes, characters, forms; styles, and canons. Misogyny: see
   the book
   ● Misandry: see the book
   ● Patriarchy: see the book
   ● Androcentrism: see the book
   ● A feminist: a person who advocates equal rights for women
   The four waves: see only the focus mentioned in the book
   Julia Kristeva
   Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1980)
   Abjection: the rejection of male-mainstream
   Elaine Showalter
   She developed the concept of gynocritcism, which focuses on women
   as writers.
   Showalter divides her female model in to two types:


6. Feminist critique exposing woman as a reader


7. Gynocritics presenting women as a writer
   A Literature of their Own: British Women Novelists from Brontë to
   Lessing (1977). This book is divided into four models
   ● The biological model: see the book
   ● The linguistic model: see the book
   ● The psychoanalytic model: see the book
   ● The cultural model: see the book
   Luce Irigaray
   Thinking the Difference (1994)
   ● Mimicry – women imitate men in order to be equal
   ● Masquerade – women as desires / or object of desires for sexual
   enjoyment, but women don’t enjoy.